From CDC HIV/Hepatitis/STD/TB Prevention News Update Monday, July 27, 2009
"Phone Gadget to Diagnose Disease"
BBC (07.22.09)
US researchers report that they have built a mobile phone-mounted light microscope with a resolution of just over one micron that can be used to identify TB in samples. The "snap-on" CellScope fluorescence microscope could be particularly useful in the developing world, where mobile phone access and coverage are common.
CellScope is made with conventional microscope optics and uses a cheap, commercial-grade light-emitting diode for its light source. While attached to a standard Nokia mobile phone with a 3.2 megapixel camera, CellScope's economical optical filters isolate the light coming from fluorescent "tagging" molecules that are designed to latch onto TB or other diseases.
Typical fluorescence microscopes are bulky and expensive.
"There are other people who have been working on developing portable fluorescent microscopes," said David Breslauer, a University of California-Berkeley researcher and the study's lead author. "The innovation on our front is that we've integrated that with a cell phone rather than just making a standalone microscope."
The mobile phone "gives us access to the computational power of the phone as well as the mobile communication aspect," Breslauer said. Image analysis software could be built into an application that runs on the phone, he said.
"In many developing world and rural areas, you could be hundreds of miles from hospitals or miles away from power, but the mobile infrastructure is well established and pretty much blanketing the globe," said Breslauer.
"So if you can have a portable, battery-operated system to take these images, analyze, and transfer them, you're creating a portable health care clinic. Your doctor can see your samples without actually having to be present."
The full report, "Mobile Phone Based Clinical Microscopy for Global Health Applications," was published in Public Library of Science ONE (2009;4(7):e6320).
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